Free Kiss Me on This Cold December Night by Charlotte Phillips Page B

that woke her up slowly. The usual second of disorientation that always happens when you stay somewhere new for the first time kicked in. It wasn’t something that had ever bothered Ella. Moving around so much for craft fairs and just her itchy-footed desire to keep moving before things went tits-up meant she was used to adapting quickly to new places. Travelling heavy helped of course. She sometimes wondered what it said about someone that everything in their life with sentimental attachment could be squashed into a couple of suitcases.
    Tom slipped back into her mind on the back of that second when she found her bearings, just the way he had done every morning at first after she’d left five years ago. How long had thoughts of him persisted? Not long. She was good at bricking things up in her mind, was a past master at it in fact. Crushing of memories combined with telling herself it hadn’t been all that. A tried and tested self-preservation exercise.
    He wasn’t here.
    The bedroom was a pigsty, clothes and half-unpacked belonging all over the place, where she’d never got around to putting them away since he’d come back to her room, after that interim goodbye that neither of them had been able to stick to. Not a single item belonging to him fell into her sightline.
    She threw the sheet back and crossed to few paces to the small en suite. The shower unit was bone dry. It was as if he’d never been here at all, as if he’d disappeared.
    Which, her fully-awake mind now insisted, was clearly the
point
.
    Now she knew what yesterday had been about for him, why he’d pursued her so insistently until she agreed to first coffee, then dinner, then bed. After the delicious night they’d spent together it turned out that it had all been about
closure
. She’d walked out on him five years ago, leaving him hanging. For Pete’s sake he’d even told her openly last night that she was the only person ever to do that to him. It had been all about taking back control, reclaiming the upper hand. And what a fool she’d been for thinking it could possibly have been about anything else. This was
her
life after all, he was only doing the inevitable. It seemed everyone she ever came across had an exit strategy from her life. There was something about her, something intangible that she’d never been able to identify, that put people off, that put their teeth on edge, like running fingernails down a blackboard. Unable to work out what it was, her only option had been to stop people mattering so it wouldn’t hurt when they made the inevitable exit.
    She’d got in first last time and the no-second-time rule would have meant she left it at that. But no, she had to meddle with it, didn’t she?
    The sick feeling of disappointment in the pit of her stomach was only matched by the anger she felt at herself for making the same mistake she’d made so many times before.
    ****
    Back to Plan A, from which she should never have deviated.
    Half an hour later and she was showered and dressed, ready to head out. The whole
point
of the weekend had been to Christmas shop, not that she had a shedload of people to buy for, but there were lots of Christmas markets to check out, full of crafts and gift stalls, and even if she didn’t have a big shopping list, she could look for some inspiration for her own jewellery designs. Perhaps next year she might be able to take a stall here instead of doing the usual waitressing. In a few years time she might even be able to drop the backup waitressing work altogether. The only area of her life with any long-term plan was her work and she refocused her mind on it, hard.
    The brief double-tap at the door came just as she was ready to leave and she opened it, assuming it would be housekeeping wanting to service the room. Not one tiny speck of her thought it could possibly be Tom. That’s how resigned to this kind of thing she’d become.